6 Things Clarissa Didn’t Explain At All

This isn’t to say hot teenage girls can’t program computer games. It’s just that they don’t. Probably because they can’t. Even the most elite nerd of the 90’s wouldn’t be able to throw together complex games on a weekly basis as a way to deal with the problems in his life. Trying to convince anyone of anything else is just offensive to nerds, hot girls, programmers, gamers- basically everyone. You know how the little brother on “Pete and Pete” had a tattoo? That made more sense than this.

Clarissa’s mom was on some serious new age bullshit. The kind of “all natural, organic, made from granola” mumbo jumbo you only buy into after buying at least a quarter ounce of the good stuff. Her dad was an offbeat architect who once designed something called the “Fryfel Tower.” Her best friend Sam loved skateboarding, surfing and climbing ladders (read: weed). Clarissa believed in UFO’s (source: Wikipedia) and looked like she got dressed in the dark with her eyes closed after hitting a giant bong. So, everybody on this show loves weed, right? Except for Ferguson. He was into noxzema and cocaine.

“Get your ladder away from my daughter’s window,” is a sentence that any father would yell after some dude climbs in your daughters second story bedroom. Yet, for some reason, Clarissa’s dad never said that. Best case scenario is this guy is banging your daughter. That’s seriously the best possible outcome you can hope for as a father. They’re probably also doing drugs in there. Studying for the SAT’s doesn’t require ladders. Even playing those weird computer games Clarissa made wouldn’t necessitate a ladder. You know what demands a ladder? Banging someone’s daughter while you’re out of your mind on drugs and then leaving without making parental eye contact.

Nobody here is arguing about whether or not the “Ferguson Explains It All” episode was amazing. It was brilliant. I’m willing to bet most fans of the show are hard pressed to name a single specific episode of the series off the top of their head besides this one. It was a random episode where Ferguson was suddenly the protagonist. The whole series was flipped on its head! But why? And with no explanation? And never again? Everything’s back to normal next week? EXPLAIN YOURSELF, DARLING FAMILY! Or don’t. Whatever.

So apparently there was an episode arch (one of the longest in the series) where a bully named Clifford is beating up Ferguson. Clarissa stands up to the bully and…they wind up dating? First of all, someone beating up Ferguson sounds like something Clarissa would be psyched about right before she went home and made some inexplicably excellent fighting game about it. Okay, so she stands up for her brother. That makes sense. But then she starts dating the bully? For the record, I don’t remember any of this. I had to look it all up on Wikipedia. Some of us were too busy playing *real* video games in the early 90’s to commit anything besides the “Ferguson Explains It All” episode to long term memory.

Seriously. What was up with the talking cat? This show was weird as hell.